Garage Sale Junkies Are Proud Of Their Addiction Of Scouring For

Bargains

SOUTHFIELD, MICH. — Most people can bring themselves to haggle only at car dealerships or Middle Eastern bazaars.

Not Albert Kalman. He haggles at garage sales. One Saturday morning he tries to talk Sumitra Simmons down from her price of $1 each for two women`s designer sport shirts. ``They`re only worth 25 cents,`` insists Kalman, who says he wants to send the shirts to a friend.

``No, no, no,`` replies an upset Simmons, who is holding the sale on her lawn in this middle-class Detroit suburb. ``I paid $25 each for them. They`re good shirts.``

``I`ll give you 50 cents each. That`s my final offer,`` counters Kalman, a 79-year-old widower who resembles the late Alfred Hitchcock. After a few uneasy seconds, the outhaggled Simmons finally gives in with a sigh: ``Okay, okay--you`re too good a bargainer.``

Shunning marked prices is just one of the traits that distinguish serious garage-sale shoppers like Kalman from merely casual droppers-by. True garage- sale fanatics also plot marathon outings with careful attention to neighborhood demographics, arrive at sales before they open so as to land the best items and frequently end up with outlandish merchandise even if they have no particular use for it.

Such is their enthusiasm that die-hard garage-salers can take in 50 or more sales a week during the heavy seasons--spring through early fall. Some even hold their own sales every year to get rid of the excess junk they have amassed.

The ranks of the fanatics presumably are increasing as garage sales themselves proliferate across the country. It is almost impossible on a clement Saturday morning in metropolitan Detroit, for instance, to drive through any middle-class subdivision without encountering a hand-scrawled curb-side sign directing drivers to a sale.

Some people frequent garage sales because they find the shopping more fun than at the mall. Some simply find it more economical. For many fanatics, however, hitting the sales seems to fulfill a psychological need.

``These people, like window-shoppers, need distraction from the anxiety of life,`` says Gary Stollak, a psychology professor at Michigan State University. ``Garage sales are a great meeting place, just like a town square.``

Many big-time sales fans are housewives and mothers in everyday life. Joyce Spicer, a mother, housewife and part-time bookkeeper in Livonia, Mich., arises early every summer Thursday for all-day garage-sale sprees; her record is 37 sales in one day. Theresa Weiland, a suburban Detroiter, mother of two and another avid garage shopper, operates on a popular principle of the hobby: You have to attend all the sales you can because you never know what you will find.

``It`s an addiction,`` says Weiland, an 11-year veteran of the sales.

``If I`m on my way to a doctor`s appointment and I see a garage-sale sign, I`ve got a tough decision to make.``

But just about anyone is likely to be a garage-saler. Lee Ceresa, an auto worker in Livonia, has used his lunch period nearly every seasonable day for 15 years to rush out of the factory gates and dart furiously from sale to sale in his beat-up car. ``I`m not that proud that I won`t shop at garage sales,`` he says. ``I`ve saved an awful lot of money.``

Few garage-salers are as devoted or effective as Kalman and Louise Van Wegen, his 62-year-old shopping companion. For one thing, they carefully plan their sprees, meeting every Saturday morning at 7:30 in a nearby McDonald`s.

Over eggs and coffee one day, they pore over the classified ads in a daily newspaper, using them to chart a course through Royal Oak and Berkley, northwestern suburbs of Detroit. Mrs. Van Wegen`s favorite targets: ``fresh`` sales (those starting that day, so the merchandise isn`t picked over) on above-average suburban streets, preferably in older neighborhoods where established families have had time to accumulate some stuff worth buying.

By 8 a.m., the two are on the road in Mrs. Van Wegen`s car. (Kalman`s is already packed to the roof with children`s clothing, spark plugs and other items accumulated at sales earlier in the week.) At the first sale, Mrs. Van Wegen--who claims that the therapeutic effects of going to garage sales have kept her alive since she was diagnosed as having lung cancer 12 years ago

--lays down $20 for a cabinet in which she plans to display the hundreds of mismatched pieces of china and glassware she has purchased over the years.

By 8:30 a.m. Kalman and Mrs. Van Wegen have pulled up in front of a prim colonial house in Berkley, a working-class town, ready to find more bargains. Trouble is, they are about 90 minutes early, and the host Trumble family is still setting up its wares on the driveway behind a locked wire fence.

``We aren`t supposed to open until 10--the ad even says!`` bellows Richard Trumble, man of the house, striding up to the fence and gripping the chain and padlock as the couple approaches.